With these preliminary observations the Committee proceed to the more grateful task of giving an account of their stewardship in the past year; and as the best means of exhibiting the organisation now existing in St. Mary Abbott’s, and informing the public of the comprehensive scheme of charity, to which they are invited to take a part, the present Report will bring in order under notice, the graduated agencies of beneficence that are exerted upon the poor throughout the several stages of their lives.
As that which refers to its very earliest period, it may be advisable to commence with some account of the
which, after an independent course of active usefulness for above thirty years, has been in some measure affiliated to the District Visiting Society, though still retaining the valuable superintendence of those ladies, under whose judicious management it has been productive of such essential service. Its purpose is to provide bags of baby-linen and other fitting articles for respectable married women during the month of their confinement; these are entrusted for distribution to the members of the Committee, who usually grant them on the recommendation of a subscriber, or of the Visitor of the District in which the applicant resides. A copy of the New Testament is sent at the same time, which is often not without its influence in suggesting to the recipient the promise that, though in “sorrow she is to bring forth children, notwithstanding she shall be saved in child-bearing, if she continue in faith, and charity, and holiness, with sobriety.” Those possessing larger means, who have been preserved in this great peril and danger, need not be told that next to the accustomed offering at the Altar, there is no more appropriate object for the pecuniary acknowledgments of a thankful spirit, than an Institution claiming to ameliorate those very sufferings from which they have in mercy been so recently delivered.
But the question of support and maintenance soon follows upon the birth of the infant. The poor mother cannot afford to remain at home all day to tend her child. What then becomes of her babe? Shall it be consigned to the care of some aged neighbour, at a cost of a third part of her daily earnings; or must the education of an elder daughter be interfered with, that she may become its nurse? Both these pernicious alternatives have been superseded by the